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Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

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Re: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

#311

Post by nerdjon »

Renaud wrote: post #90

Synology isn't about the NAS hardware and OS. Once setup, it doesn't really matter as long as your config is reliable and fast, so there are many competitive options to move to. The killer feature for me is the app ecosystem. I have a very old 8-bay Synology NAS and have it setup in just a few clicks to backup my dropbox, my MS365 accounts, my Google business accounts, do redundant backup to external drive, backup im…

How much of a market is there really for those apps? They are competing against most consumers accepting the ease (and significantly cheaper) of cloud based storage.

We (in the tech space) can scream privacy and risks of the cloud all day long but most consumers seem to just not care.

I have 2 Synology NAS and the only app that I actually use is Synology Drive thanks to the sync app, but there are open source alternatives that would work better and not require a client on the NAS side to work.

I can't imagine any enterprise would be using these features.

Been in the market for a new NAS myself and I am going to be looking into truenas or keep an eye on what Ubiquity is doing in this space (but its a no go until they add the ability to communicate with a UPS).

Re: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

#312

Post by p_ing »

lostlogin wrote: post #127
TiredOfLife wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows storage spaces

I don’t think that is comparable with a good NAS.

NAS? No, but SAN or DAS, yes. It provides similar features, plus any bog standard x86 application you wish to run.

Re: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

#313

Post by michaelt »

asdswe wrote: post #228

I can hardly see the point for devices like this. If you are tech-savvy enough to host your own NAS locally, you might as well build your own NAS and install whatever user-friendly OS (Unraid, OpenMediaVault as an example) you wish. No vendor-lock in whatsoever that way. If you arent tech savvy enough, then you should probably use cloud storage anyway.

Honestly they got into the NAS business when cloud offerings were different, and many Internet connections were a lot slower.

Synology’s market is the intersection of:

People who have lots of pirated media, who want generous storage with torrent capabilities.

People who want to store CCTV feeds.

People who find the cloud too expensive, or feel it isn’t private enough.

People with a “two is one, one is none” backup philosophy, for whom the cloud alone is not enough.

Tiny businesses that just need a windows file share.

Re: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

#314

Post by bluGill »

nerdjon wrote: post #311
Renaud wrote: post #90

Synology isn't about the NAS hardware and OS. Once setup, it doesn't really matter as long as your config is reliable and fast, so there are many competitive options to move to. The killer feature for me is the app ecosystem. I have a very old 8-bay Synology NAS and have it setup in just a few clicks to backup my dropbox, my MS365 accounts, my Google business accounts, do redundant backup to external drive, backup im…

How much of a market is there really for those apps? They are competing against most consumers accepting the ease (and significantly cheaper) of cloud based storage. We (in the tech space) can scream privacy and risks of the cloud all day long but most consumers seem to just not care. I have 2 Synology NAS and the only app that I actually use is Synology Drive thanks to the sync app, but there are open source alterna…

Without the apps they have even less market though.

Re: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

#315

Post by brookst »

yurishimo wrote: post #232
spease wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a great argument for selling drives, not for locking your devices down to practically require them The counterargument is, people won’t listen and then blame Synology when their data is affected. At which point it may be too late for anything but attempting data recovery. Sufficiently nontechnical users may blame the visible product (the NAS) even if the issue is some nuance to the parts choice made by a tec…

I don’t think anyone would care if Synology gave priority to their own drives. A checkbox during setup that says “Yes, I know I’m using these drives that have not been validated blah blah blah” would be plenty. That’s not what Synology did however and that’s the main reason everyone is pissed.

But those people would call support when the array couldn’t rebuild. And many of them would blame Synology, and demand warranty replacement of the “defective” device, and generally cost money and stress.

As long as Synology is up front in the requirement and has a return policy for users who buy one and are surprised, I think they’re well within their rights to decide they’re tired of dealing with support costs from misbehaving drives.

As long as they don’t retroactively enforce this policy on older devices I don’t understand the emotionality here. Haven’t you ever found yourself stuck supporting software / systems / etc that customers were trying to cheap out on, making their problems yours?

Re: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

#316

Post by brookst »

moooo99 wrote: post #287
spease wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a great argument for selling drives, not for locking your devices down to practically require them The counterargument is, people won’t listen and then blame Synology when their data is affected. At which point it may be too late for anything but attempting data recovery. Sufficiently nontechnical users may blame the visible product (the NAS) even if the issue is some nuance to the parts choice made by a tec…

> The counterargument is, people won’t listen and then blame Synology when their data is affected. At which point it may be too late for anything but attempting data recovery. Is it though? Most (consumer) NAS systems are probably sold without the drives which are bough separately. When there is an issue with the drive and it breaks, I’m pretty sure most people technical enough to consider the need for a NAS would at…

I know a photographer who needs tech support for really anything, and who has bought drives and upgraded is NAS himself. I don’t think that’s unusual, but of course n=1.

Re: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

#317

Post by freeAgent »

op00to wrote: post #305
freeAgent wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as lists of drives to avoid, Synology could certainly do that, but we also already have Backblaze’s reports on their own failure rates. Synology also uses multiple vendors to produce “Synology” branded drives, so as the article states this may also lead to confusion about which Synology branded drives are “good” vs. “bad” in the future, even with seemingly identical specs.

The idea is not so much about which drives fail or whatever. It’s more that certain consumer drives have firmwares that don’t work well with NAS workloads. Long timeouts could be treated as a failed drive rather than a transient error by a desktop drive, for example.

I’d argue that anyone who is buying a NAS for personal use probably does enough research to figure out that NAS-focused/appropriate drives are a thing-though. And if they contact Synology support, it should be very easy for them to identify bad drive types. On top of that, they can (and have) warn about problematic drives.

Re: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

#319

Post by msh »

Renaud wrote: post #90

Synology isn't about the NAS hardware and OS. Once setup, it doesn't really matter as long as your config is reliable and fast, so there are many competitive options to move to. The killer feature for me is the app ecosystem. I have a very old 8-bay Synology NAS and have it setup in just a few clicks to backup my dropbox, my MS365 accounts, my Google business accounts, do redundant backup to external drive, backup im…

qnap seems to have a similar app ecosystem, or is there a quality difference? I have only used QNAP NAS devices so I dont know.

Re: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

#320

Post by emmelaich »

_cenw wrote: post #101
emmelaich wrote: post #95

I have some sympathy for this. With the disasters of the WD 'Green' series and the recent revelations on how used disks were being sold for new. Synology doesn't want to be lumped with other companies problems. They really have to sell it by minimising the price differential and reducing the lead time.

Slapping Synology stickers on Seagate drives doesn't make them magically immune from being mislabeled out of refurbishment. This is the same old tired argument Apple made about iPhone screens - complain about inferior aftermarket parts while doing everything in their power to not make the original parts available anywhere but AASPs. Except here we have the literal same parts with only a difference in the firmware ven…

Of course. But my hope is Synology does a little bit of QA before slapping that sticker on.
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